Page 12 of Thrust into the Light
I go out to where Connor said food was waiting. It is even brighter out here, and my eyes are starting to leak a bit. This room is so big! It has really big chairs in it that look like a few people could sit on them. There is a table on the other side of the room that is filled with food. Connor is standing behind the table, rubbing his neck.
“So, I can’t cook, but I can order food like a pro. I wasn’t sure what to order you. Why not try a little of everything and see what you like?”
I have never, ever, in my entire life, seen so much food. I try a little of some of it, and before I have even gotten a bite of half of it, I am full. Connor told me what everything was when I tried it and seemed to be watching me when I ate. He would nod at something and write it down, or smile when I tried something I liked.
“So I’m going to guess it’s safe to say you like bacon, pineapple, sweet and sour chicken, chicken marsala, peanut butter and jelly sandwiches, and carrots.” I nod along with everything he is saying. They were all so good.
“Well, the positive news there is, I can make peanut butter and jelly sandwiches, and carrots don’t require any cooking skills! So I can make those for you anytime you want them. I can do canned pineapple, but I have no clue where to even begin to cut up a fresh one for you. Come on, let’s go meet the healer. Then we are going to go clothes shopping.”
Connor walks towards the door and has his hand held out to me. I walk over to him and he grabs my hand. He opens up the front door and I am not prepared for the first time I have been outside in a long time.
It is so much brighter outside than inside where we were. Connor is talking while we walk, but I can’t pay attention to anything he is saying. We are walking on a gray path that is hard. There is grass surrounding it. There are trees sprinkled around everywhere. I look back to where we came from and it looks like some places I used to live when I was little, but a lot nicer looking. As we walk farther along the gray path, some spots haveplaces to sit down. There are round gray things that have pretty plants growing in them. Feeling the warmth on my skin from all around me, I look around to see where the heat is coming from and frown when I can’t figure it out. I like the feeling of it on my skin. There are big white fluffy pillows in the sky. I remember seeing things like that when I was a lot smaller.
The pathway curves and goes through a lot of trees. As we walk through the darkened area by the trees, it gets a lot colder. I wonder if the reason it is cold is that it’s dark here. I never noticed it being colder when the light was off before, or warmer when it was on. I don’t know when Connor stopped talking, but he still is holding my hand. His hand is warm. It feels nice around my tiny cold one.
We come out of the trees, and I stop walking. There is an immense building. Why is everything so big? The big bed I woke up in, the big bowl in the bathroom, the big chairs, big rooms, big tables, big buildings! Everything makes me feel so small. Even Connor is big! The building looks to be made of metal. There are a lot of really big windows that almost cover the entire building. There is a big stone thing in the front that has water coming out of it. It looks like a lot of stone creatures are in the water. I have never seen anything like it before.
Connor explains to me that the thing with the water is called a fountain and quickly told me that we don’t drink from it, the water in it could make me sick. I need to figure out what water I can and can’t drink. I don’t feel like I need to drink right now, but I don’t want to get sick, so it’s something I need to learn.
We begin walking and Connor begins moving his head around like he’s looking for something. He finds something and pulls me behind him with my hand. He comes to a stop at a flat chair and sits down on it.
“Sit next to me for a few minutes. We have a little before the healer is expecting us, but I wanted to talk to you about something that happened while you slept.”
I sit down next to Connor and he grabs both of my hands with his own.
“No matter what happens, Farlen, I am here to protect you no matter what, and when we find your other matches, they will be, too. So when you slept, uh, someone else talked through your body, they still sounded like you, but not really. They said that your magic cannot get out and you would keep sleeping like that anytime your body tried to use your magic until it gets out. I also met the police who found you. They found out more information about you. This is so much harder to talk about with you than I thought. All they know is your name is Farlen, you are twenty-four years old, and your birthday is the 46th day of midsummer. You spent eighteen years in that house. You were six years old when you went to live there.”
I don’t know what to say to him. He looks sad. What would Agnes do if she were here? Oh, I know! I pull my hands out of his and give him a hug. He hugs me back.
“It’s alright, sweetheart. Let’s go meet the healer. Then shopping. If you keep using your words and talking to me, maybe I can get you some new food to try that I have a feeling you’re going to like a lot. It is okay to talk to the healer. He isn’t going to hurt you. All Healers are here to help people not to hurt them.”
“O-o-oo-kay.”
“Good girl,” he says to me with a smile, and it does funny things to my stomach. He grabs my hand and we stand up and walk towards a little building that has a red shape surrounded by white.
15
Farlen
We walk through a set of glass doors and are in a room that reminds me of the room in the hospital they brought Connor into. It is all white, and there are beds throughout the room, and chairs on the wall. There are a lot of curtains around the room, set in between the beds. Standing in the room is a male dressed in white clothes. He looks up at us as we walk into the room.
“Ah, you must be my new charge. Agnes said your name is Farlen? You must be someone pretty special for my sister to call in the favor she has lorded over my head for the last eighty years. Well, come on over here. Let me get a better look at you. My name is Healer Daniel, I have been healing for a long time. Ah yes, poor dear, those scars are going to be tricky for me to heal, but I should be able to heal them all eventually. It would have to be done in small batches, so I do not deplete myself totally. I still need to heal others who require it.”
Healer Daniel isn’t as tall as Connor, and he said I could trust him, that he wouldn’t hurt me. I step closer to him, not sure what I am supposed to do.
“Alright Farlen, the hospital sent over your medical records, including what information they had on you, so I know how to treat you. I see you have trouble getting your magic out, which isn’t unusual for someone just coming into their powers. Your teachers will help you with that unless you are one of my pupils. Then I guess that will be my job.” He chuckles, “Well, before Iget a head of myself, let’s sit you down here on this bed, I am going to do a scan of you with my powers, so I can see if there’s anything the technology scans they did on you missed. Some things technology can’t pick up on, even though it depletes part of my power reserve, and is a bit slower, it is still better if I say so myself. Farlen, do you want the young man to stay, or leave?”
“S-s-s-stay please?”
He nods and writes something down on a paper he has near the bed.
“Alright, I am going to do the scan. Try not to move too much. You can breathe and move if you need to, but don’t fidget too much.”
He holds his hands out near me and his hands begin to glow a white color. I feel a warmth coming off his hands as he slowly moves them along my body without touching me. I don’t know how long it takes, but after a while, his hands stop glowing and he grabs his paper and begins writing.
“You have some pretty severe damage to your vocal cords, there are too many poorly fused bones to count, scar tissue litters almost every major organ in your body, you are extremely malnourished, and almost all of your muscles have atrophied, your leg muscles show the most definition, I’m assuming you were doing physical therapy at the hospital?” I nod at him. That is what Agnes says June was, or something close to it.
“Alright, well, we will have you walk around, which will help build up the muscles in your legs more. If you start to feel tired, just have a seat where you are until you feel you can get back to your room. I am assuming the young man with you is one of your matches? Good, young man, we need to work on her upper body strength, start slow and go easy with her, give her small things to lift, start with milk about five reps a day, until she can do it without too much effort, and then move her up to something a little more challenging. When she can walk around at a decent pace without effort, we need to get her jogging. Her physical training classes are going to be extremely hard for her. I will send word to the Instructor that you are to be excused frommost activities and send a detailed report to him about what you can do and when to move up to more advanced things. Combat classes you will participate in, they pair you based on skill and strength, so your partner should be someone that will challenge you but not someone who will lord their win over you and make you feel inferior.”
